William Penn

by Rupert Sargent Holland

Governor Thomas Penn had promised to give five pounds in money and five hundred acres of land to the walker who should cover the greatest distance, and these three had entered the contest for the prize. As the sheriff gave the word to start the three men were off. Yeates took the lead, followed by Jennings, beside whom walked two Indians to see that the walking was fair. After them came men on horseback, among whom were the sheriff and the surveyor general, and at a little distance Governor Thomas Penn himself. At the back of the procession came Edward Marshall, walking easily, swinging a hatchet in his hand, "to balance himself," as he said, and munching dry biscuits that he took from his pocket. He had said in advance that he would "win the prize of five hundred acres of land, or lose his life in the attempt," but he walked as if he had forgotten that determination.

The walkers pushed steadily on, never at a loss for direction, for Thomas Penn had secretly sent out a surveying party in advance to blaze the trees along a straight line for as great a distance as it was thought possible for a man to walk in eighteen hours. Therefore even when they reached the wilderness the walkers had the straightest course marked out for them. Then the Indians began to protest against the increasing speed of the white men, saying again and again, "That's not fair. You are running! You were to walk." In answer the white men only said that the treaty had used the words, "As far as a man can go," and therefore they had a right to run if they wished. Presently the Indians tried to delay the march by stopping to rest, but the horsemen who were with the party dismounted and insisted on the Indians riding their horses, and so the "march" continued as rapidly as ever. At last the Indians refused to go any farther, and left the white men.

Solomon Jennings was tired out before the Lehigh River was reached, and left the race to the other two, following for a time with some of the spectators.

That night the walking party slept on the north side of the Lehigh Mountains. In the morning some of the white men hunted for the horses that had strayed from camp during the night, while others went to the village to ask the chief to send other Indians to accompany the white walkers. The chief answered angrily, "You have all the good land now, and you may as well take the bad, too." Another Indian, who had heard how the white men had raced along, trying to get as much land as possible, said disgustedly, "No sit down to smoke; no shoot squirrel; but lun, lun, lun, all day long!"

The last half-day's walk had hardly begun when James Yeates dropped out, finding the exertion of such a rapid pace too much for him. Marshall, however, still pressed on, traveling very fast. When he passed the last of the trees that had been blazed to guide them, he took a compass held out to him by the surveyor general, who was riding, and kept his direction by its aid. At last the sheriff, looking at his watch, called out, "Halt!" Marshall threw himself forward, and grasped a sapling. That point then became the mark for the northern boundary of the purchase made many years before, a mark that was sixty-eight miles from the chestnut tree at the crossroads at Wrightstown, and close to the site of the present town of Mauch Chunk. The distance covered had been twice as great as the Indians had supposed it would be.

In another way also the Delawares, who knew little of legal matters, were tricked by Thomas Penn's officers. The deed that set forth the purchase did not state in what direction the northern boundary was to be drawn, but the Indians had naturally expected that it would be run to the nearest point on the Delaware River. The surveyor general, however, decided that the line should be drawn at right angles to the direction of the walk, which was almost straight northwest. If a line were drawn from the town of Mauch Chunk to the Delaware so that if it were extended it would reach New York City, that line would represent what the Indians thought the northern boundary should be. But if a line be drawn from Mauch Chunk to the point where New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania meet, the result will be the boundary that Thomas Penn's surveyor general actually marked out four days after Edward Marshall finished his remarkable walk. As a result the amount of land that was taken from the Indians under this purchase was increased from the three hundred thousand acres they thought they should give to half a million acres, and all because white men took a selfish advantage of a loosely worded deed!

The Delawares, or Lenni-Lenape, had always trusted William Penn, because he had been scrupulously fair with them. They had said, "We will live in love with William Penn and his children as long as the sun and moon shall shine." The result of this "Walking Purchase" in 1737, however, which took away from the tribe all the land along the river from which they took their name, was to embitter them against the white men, and destroy the friendship that William Penn had been so careful to create between the two races.

It is pleasant to remember that the settlers of William Penn's time paid the Indians when they made purchases of land. There is a record of the sale of what was called the "Salem tract," a piece of land with a frontage of twenty-four miles on the Delaware and extending back far enough to include over eight hundred square miles. For this, it is related, the Indians received the following curious assortment of articles in payment: